Ryan D. Matthews is a writer and editor from rural Washington State who earned an MFA from the New School. With more than twelve years of experience in digital marketing and editorial; demonstrated expertise launching new products, growing audiences, and increasing traffic; he brings a sharp eye and an array of creative skills and strategies to any project or organization.
Tall buildings, tall trees, foreign films, books in translation, and the Seattle Mariners.
Ryan D. Matthews is a writer from rural Washington State who earned an MFA from the New School. Winner of the New York Council on the Arts and the de Groot Foundation Courage to Write Award, Ryan D. Matthews has been recognized with fellowships from Hawthornden Castle, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Lighthouse Works, the Millay Colony, Ucross Foundation, Tin House, The Wurlitzer Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Willapa Bay AiR, the Ragdale Foundation, the Jentel Foundation, the Hambidge Center, the Eastern Frontier Foundation, the Terry Family Foundation, Can Serrat International Art Center, and others.
He has taught creative writing through Duke University’s OLLI Program, is a member of PEN America Center, as well as a voting member of the National Book Critics Circle. He works at an organization that provides online psychotherapy—attempting to destigmatize and broaden access to mental healthcare—and as a community activist—founding and hosting The Rally, a political reading series in Brooklyn, which to date has raised thousands of dollars for small- and medium-sized nonprofits.
He also sits on the PEN America Prison Writing Awards Committee, one of the few outlets of free expression for the country’s incarcerated population as well as working as a housing rights advocate in Flatbush, Brooklyn, fighting for the rights of vulnerable tenants. He has also juried fiction applications for the Millay Colony and Willapa Bay AiR’s core artist residency applications.
He was recently nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award and for the 2019 Emerging Artists Program from the Jerome Foundation, as well as a two-time semi-finalist for the 2021 George Bennett Fellowship from Phillips Exeter Academy. He is the curator and host of The Rally—a political reading series—and his work has appeared most recently in Lit Hub, Litro, Joyland, and the Michigan Quarterly Review.